Implementation Issues: a ‘FRIENDS for life’ course in a mainstream secondary school

“FRIENDS for life” is a manualised, 10 week, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) based programme designed to be run in school and community settings. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of “FRIENDS for life” when implemented in a mainstream secondary school by school staff. Data regarding implementation of the programme were collected and analysed using activity theory. A Single Case Experimental Design was used to monitor the impact of the intervention on the emotional distress and coping strategies of five secondary school participants. The findings suggest that participation in FRIENDS did not result in the hypothesised reductions in emotional distress, or improvement in coping skills. However programme implementation was incomplete. Analysis using activity theory suggested that factors such as lack of time, space for delivery, and experience and training impacted upon implementation and could be further supported by educational psychologists when developing these interventions.     

‘Sexual violence is not good for our country's development’. Students’ interpretations of sexual violence in a secondary school in Addis Ababa,Ethiopia

It has been increasingly recognised that sexual violence in schools is one of the major concerns with regard to promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights. This paper examines how boys and girls define, experience, and interpret sexual violence in a secondary school in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and considers from their perspectives, how sexual violence can be addressed effectively in formal educational settings. Fifteen in-depth interviews and two focus group discussions revealed how these views can be strikingly different for boys and girls: boys sharing a theoretical and instrumental view on sexual violence, as opposed to girls’ emotional views based on their experiences. This major difference in understanding complicates teaching about sexuality, and leaves room for sexual violence to remain tolerated in schools. Nevertheless, all students express the need to learn openly about sexuality, and particularly to reflect on the contradicting messages they receive from their environment.     

That’s Not For Our Kids: The strange death of philosophy and ethics in a low socioeconomic secondary school

Abstract

This article reflects on the successes and failures of a new Philosophy and Ethics course in a low socioeconomic context in Perth, Western Australia, with the eventual demise of the subject in the school at the end of 2010. We frame this reflection within Deleuzian notions of geophilosophy to advocate for a Philosophy and Ethics that is informed by nomadic thought, as this offers a critical freedom for students to transform themselves and their society and suggests practical ways both of overcoming the prejudices which led to its demise and of student reluctance to engage in open discussion in class. We consider the demise of the course a ‘missed opportunity’ because it had so much potential to be transformative of student subjectivities in schools.     

‘What’s in a name? The power of the English language in secondary school science education’

Cultural Studies of Science Education - The global dominance of the English language has led to intense debates with the emergence of studies of English as a lingua franca. These debates can be...     

Negotiating and contesting ‘success’: discourses of aspiration in a UK secondary school

The need to ‘raise aspirations’ among young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds has been prominent in UK policy debates over the last decade. This paper examines how this discourse is negotiated and contested by teachers and pupils in a Scottish secondary school. Interviews, group discussions and observations were analysed by drawing on Foucauldian discourse analysis. The analysis exposes contradictions and silences inherent in dominant discourses of aspiration, most notably the tension between the promise and the impossibility of ‘success’ for all. It is argued that attempts to reconcile this tension by calling on young people to maximise individual ‘potential’ through attitude change silence the social construction of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. The paper concludes with suggesting ways in which schools could embrace the contradictions underpinning dominant ‘raising aspiration’ discourses and adopt a more critical-sociological approach in working with young people.     

Becoming a secondary school teacher in England and France: contextualising career ‘choice’

This article explores the circumstances in which individuals become secondary school teachers in England and France. Using a social constructivist theoretical framework, it specifically considers how national contexts play out in this decision. The findings presented in this paper draw on a corpus of 60 interviews with a sample of teachers based in English and French secondary schools. They show that national frameworks remain relevant to an exploration of teachers’ identities and cultures, as French and English interviewees draw on distinctive reasons to explain why they became secondary school teachers. While becoming a teacher is often thought of as a ‘vocation’ or as the result of ‘intrinsic’ factors, this paper highlights the role of national contexts, as well as of gender and social class, in this process.     

Leaving or staying in teaching: a ‘vignette’ of an experienced urban teacher ‘leaver’ of a London primary school

In the field of teacher attrition, there is a significant body of literature on why teachers leave high-needs urban schools and particularly why beginning teachers leave their schools and the profession. However, there is little research on the reasons why experienced teachers leave the teaching profession. This paper examines this subject by considering whether teachers experience an ‘identity crisis’ in their careers which prompts them to leave. Drawing on identity theory, data from a single case study of an experienced urban teacher are taken from a wider qualitative research study carried out in London, England. The case is made that decisions to leave or stay in a school are contingent on a number of personal, professional and situational factors related to the teacher’s identity. The article concludes that one way to understand why long-serving teachers leave the profession is to examine aspects of their teacher identity and explore how a crisis in professional identity can contribute towards teacher attrition. In the light of this alternative approach towards understanding attrition, at the very least, supportive structures can be put in place to encourage more teachers to stay and contribute to the success and well-being of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.     

‘Possible selves’ of young people in a mainstream secondary school and a pupil referral unit: a comparison

This research uses the psychological construct of ‘possible selves’ to investigate the aspirations of 25 students in Year 11. ‘Possible selves’ provide a conceptual link between self-concept and motivation. The study compared the positive, negative and impossible possible selves of Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) attendees with participants from a secondary school. Whereas 100% of the school students generated positive possible selves, only 69% of the PRU participants did so. The school students were more able to provide sub-goal strategies to achieve positive possible selves and could articulate alternatives if their first aspiration eluded them. PRU participants generated divergent impossible selves. The findings suggest that in comparison with those in school, PRU attendees have fragile positive selves and more negative perceptions of their prospects. This may indicate a lack of internalisation of positive future options. There are implications for practice as those who work in the PRU context aim to provide meaningful experiences.     

‘Doing’ gender in a rural Scottish secondary school: an ethnographic study of classroom interactions

This article draws on data from an ethnographic case study that examined how pupils’ gendered identities are constructed in one rural secondary school in Scotland. We utilise the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler to provide theoretical insight into how and why pupils take up particular gendered positions in school, focusing on the influence of teacher–pupil interactions. The findings suggest that some teachers reinforce traditional constructs of masculinities and femininities, and fail to disrupt boys’ views of girls as objects of desire. Teachers are also seen to reinforce gender stereotypes in their understandings of the rural landscape as an exclusive site for constructing masculine identities. We claim that this potentially limits pupils’ educational experiences. We conclude by suggesting that there is a need for teachers to develop deeper, more sophisticated understandings of gender, an area currently neglected in Scottish educational policy and teacher education programmes.     

‘Whatever she may study,she can’t escape from washing dishes’: gender inequity in secondary education – evidence from a longitudinal study in India

Using unique panel data from Young Lives study conducted in undivided Andhra Pradesh, India, this mixed-method paper analyses gender differentials in completion of secondary education. Results show biased secondary school completion rates in favor of boys. Probit regression results highlight certain variables such as mothers’ education, wealth, high self-efficacy, early reading skills, lower birth order, and not engaging in more than two hours of domestic work and paid work at age 12, as positively associated with educational outcomes for girls. Decomposition analysis highlights that engaging in domestic chores at age 12 is the most contributory factor (36%) for the persisting gender gap. The other unexplained contributory factors may well be existing discriminatory social norms and son preference, which is captured by the qualitative case studies. The findings suggest that unless we are able to address persisting gender norms, universalizing secondary education with gender equity, will remain a distant dream.     

‘You’ll see that everywhere’: institutional isomorphism in secondary school subject departments

This paper asks why spatially separated school departments might exhibit, in different ways, very similar practices. Data from an ethnographic study of three secondary school geography departments in England are discussed through a concept of ‘isomorphism’ (homogenising forces), drawn from neo-institutional theory. Similarities across these departments are analysed in terms of coercive isomorphism, including the strong regulatory role played by examination boards and Ofsted; mimetic isomorphism, in which similar approaches are adopted in response to situations of high uncertainty, based on spreading good practice; and normative isomorphism, including the implications of closely guarded educational routes, the professionalisation of teaching, and wider social trends including the increasing use of Google as a source of knowledge for lessons. It is argued that evidence of homogeneity across spatially separated departments raises interesting questions about teachers’ practice, with implications for departmental and school leadership.     

‘It’s not a hobby’: reconceptualizing the place of writing in academic work

The writing activities involved in research are not fully articulated in discussions of academic work. In this context, academics say they have to disengage from other tasks in order to write, which raises fundamental questions about the place of writing in academic work. A study designed to find out more about this disengagement showed that it involved acts of engagement with writing. Reconceptualizing disengagement from other tasks as engagement with writing repositions writing as part of academic work. This is critical for new and emerging researchers: it provides concepts to underpin practices that will enable them regularly to write. This article provides a model for physical, social and cognitive engagement with writing and explores how it can be put into practice. Implications for academics and those responsible for developing research capacity are discussed.     

From aspirations to practice: curriculum challenges for a new ‘twenty-first-century’ secondary school

This paper reports on the initial stages of an empirical study of a new secondary school in New Zealand. The school vision and organisation reflect current international twenty-first-century learning discourse by confronting long-established beliefs concerning the nature of education and knowledge and the roles of teachers and students. The school's focus is on developing the dispositions and competencies of students through thematic, intersubject, inquiry-based learning. While these twenty-first-century ideas appear widely accepted worldwide, there is little research on the impact of these ideas on student learning. This study considers the challenges faced by the school in moving from aspirational vision to curriculum enactment during its first 18 months of operation. The focus of this paper is the curriculum design and development process. The issues faced by staff in this twenty-first-century school will be of interest to educationalists worldwide who are involved with the planning of new schools and curricular innovation within existing schools. Four key questions that arise from the study and that will form the focus of future research are identified.     

‘It’s the parents’: re-presenting parents in school bullying research

Public discourse about school bullying is frequently underscored by debates about the relative roles and responsibilities of parents and schools in preventing bullying. Such debates are often characterised by a sense of recrimination, with blame apportioned according to perceived negligence. In this article, I provide a critique of ways in which parents have been represented in school bullying research, and consider how these representations inform public discourse about parents in relation to bullying. I argue that prevailing representations of parents in terms of responsibility and risk are a product of the dominance of psychological conceptualisations of bullying as individual pathological behaviour which stems from child development problems associated with poor parenting. As I show, this is but one of a number of ways in which bullying has been conceptualised in the research literature and provides a limited view of parents in relation to a complex social and cultural problem. I suggest that post-structural approaches to bullying research provide an important opportunity to broaden our understanding of how parents are positioned in the social and institutional systems of power in which bullying, and responses to it, takes place; and to move beyond current counter-productive discourses of responsibility and blame.     

Music on the move: methodological applications of Bernstein’s concepts in a secondary school music context

In 2002 Parlo Singh outlined Bernstein’s theory of the pedagogic device, elaborating the potential in Bernstein’s complex theoretical framework for empirical research. In particular, Singh suggests that Bernstein’s concepts provide the means of making explicit the macro and micro structuring of knowledge into pedagogic communication. More recently, Power has noted that use of Bernstein’s ideas remains relatively unrepresented in the literature. This paper makes a case for the use of Bernstein’s ideas as a particularly rich resource for educational researchers. It provides illustrations of a number of concepts as part of a methodological procedure in a research project examining the approaches to curriculum and pedagogy of six secondary school music teachers within the dialectic of western art music and popular music. Through utilisation of Bernstein’s concepts of knowledge discourses, recontextualisation, and regionalisation, the study is able to identify, describe, and shed light on a key problem for music education and education generally: developing the pedagogical means for the utilisation of informal knowledge as a pedagogic resource within the secondary school curriculum. In turn, the music context suggests a number of extensions to Bernstein’s concepts.     

‘It’s just because we’re girls’: How female students experience and negotiate masculinist school sport

This article focuses on the inequalities experienced particularly by girls who attend co-educational secondary schools where specific male sports dominate school life. The research was undertaken in the Republic of Ireland in three schools known for the participation and success of boys’ teams in Gaelic football, hurling and rugby. Through a Bourdieusian account of ‘masculine domination’, this article examines how girls (and some boys) attending these schools have experienced inequalities in obtaining recognition in sport, and discrimination in accessing male-orientated sports, as well as unequal opportunities, resources and support. School management, teachers and students (both male and female) will be shown to often protect this male preserve by strategies that maintain the exclusion of girls through the normalisation of gender binaries. The article will also show how girls reflect upon their experiences and attempt to mobilise change.     

Reflections on Allen and West’s paper: ‘Religious schools in London: school admissions,religious composition and selectivity’

This paper is a reflection upon the research findings of Rebecca Allen and Anne West in relation to religious schools in London. While welcoming this contribution to the systematic study of faith schools (a neglected area of empirical inquiry), the paper argues that the use of ‘religious schools’ as a unitary category is problematic for the analysis. It also suggests that certain historical and cultural contextual knowledge is required when analysing the characteristics of different categories of religious schools. This response is intended to be helpful for future researchers into the different types of faith school.     

‘We can only change in a small way’: A study of secondary English teachers’ implementation of curriculum reform in China

This article reports on a study of English secondary teachers’ perceptions of and implementation of the new English curriculum reform in China. Triangulated data collection methods were employed to gather information about teachers’ perceptions of the new curriculum and their teaching behaviours. Implementation gap emerged between the new curriculum requirements and the teachers’ classroom practices despite the teachers’ common endorsement of the new curriculum goals and pedagogies due to a series of contextual constraints: the considerable professional and psychological challenges to teachers, the students’ resistance, and the lack of support school administrators and most importantly, the backwash effect of the prevalent examination culture. The study suggests the necessity to address teachers’ challenges and difficulties in the curriculum reform process to facilitate their implementation of the reform.